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‘Testosterone’s aggressive impact is a myth. It makes you friendlier’

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:08:33 GMT

It is popularly known as the selfish hormone, which courses through male veins to promote egotistical and antisocial behaviour. Yet research has suggested that testosterone’s bad reputation is largely undeserved.

Far from always increasing aggression and greed, the male hormone can actually encourage decency and fair play, scientists have discovered.

The common belief that it makes people quarrelsome, however, can cause it to have that effect.

The findings, from an Anglo-Swiss team, suggest that rather than encouraging selfishness and risk-taking as a matter of course, testosterone has subtler effects on human behaviour that depend very much on social circumstances.

The research also highlights the importance of social expectations and prejudices on the placebo effect:

“It appears that it is not testosterone itself that induces aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone,” said Michael Naef, of Royal Holloway, University of London, an author of the study.

Tags: testosterone

Can antidepressants change someone's personality?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:19:37 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Taking antidepressants may change aspects of a person's personality, as well as lifting their mood, new research has claimed. A study found that people's tendencies for being neurotic or extroverted changed even more than their mood during antidepressant treatment.

Antidepressants called selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are used to treat depression. They boost the amount of a chemical called serotonin in your brain. Serotonin is used to carry messages around the brain.

Doctors previously thought that SSRIs lifted mood by increasing serotonin when people didn't have enough of it. Although people being treated may have said they felt more sociable, or got upset less easily, this was seen as a side effect of their improved mood, not a change in their basic personality.

But researchers are now interested in whether serotonin actually makes a difference to personality traits, and whether changes in these traits are what improves people's mood, rather than the other way around.

Tags: depression, anti-depressants, personality

Sally: do I have a personality disorder?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:10:40 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: women.timesonline.co.uk

I seem to be caught in a frustrating, painful loop. I’m in my mid-thirties, and often loving with boyfriends, but also suffer from violent mood swings and a terrible temper. I can’t express myself when I’m sad or frustrated, read wrong meanings into innocent actions, then become ridiculously angry and sulk for hours.

I hate it, but can’t seem to control myself, and watch helplessly as I sabotage my own happiness.

How can I stop my behaviour? Do I have a personality disorder?

I think it’s highly unlikely that you have a personality disorder. However, it may be that you have some form of mood disorder, hence the violent emotional swings, high levels of irritability, hypersensitivity and a distorted perception of the intentions of others.

Mood disorders are both bewildering and distressing, and your description of being aware of your own behaviour, and yet feeling powerless and helpless in the face of it, is symptomatic

Tags: mood disorders

With friends like these...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:48:37 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

We know our best friends almost as well as know ourselves, right? Maybe not...

It's generally held that friends are people with whom we choose to forge relationships because we find their specific personalities agreeable, or similar to our own, and yet experience regularly contradicts this.

The truth is that we don't know our friends nearly as well as we imagine. Numerous studies show that we tend to assume our friends agree with us – on politics, ethics, etc – more than they really do.

once a friendship has begun, cognitive dissonance helps keep it going: having decided that someone's your friend, you want to like them, if only to confirm that you made the right decision.

friendship exposed as a self-serving ruse in which it doesn't matter who your friends are so long as they agree to the role, presumably for their own equally egotistical reasons

perhaps a true friend is someone who doesn't ask many awkward questions.

Tags: friendship

Normally neurotic

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:13:01 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

I, like the character I play in The Thick of It, am badly claustrophobic.

this was not just an underground train, but one at the height of rush hour. Anyone who has suffered from a phobia or anxiety attack will know what I mean: I simply couldn't get on it.

My husband and kids were happy to use it, but I decided to return to the upper floor, reasoning that there must be another route. After all, claustrophobia's quite common, so surely the airport would have a plan for the more neurotic customer.

There were no staff members to advise me – and no way out without using a lift. By now, I was in the grip of a full-blown panic. I was trapped on a tube platform and the only way out was to get on the tube. This is the stuff of anxiety dreams – trust me, I have them regularly.

Having a phobia puts you in a strange netherworld somewhere between disability and "normal".

society at large is bewildered by this apparently wilful inability to do what is expected.

Tags: claustrophobia

Story? Unforgettable. The Audience? Often Not.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:06:53 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

If a friend is someone who laughs at our stories, then a good friend is one who enjoys them even the second time around. But anyone who gasps with delight on hearing a story for the third time is faking it.

It is not an entirely irrational fear, either, according to new research published in the journal Psychological Science.

“We often have a hard time remembering who we told things to, and clearly it starts early.”

In their long study of memory, psychologists have made important distinctions between the short-term and long-term varieties.

While the source of remembered information can be crucially important (Did I read that in The Onion or the daily newspaper?), so is its destination. Our stories, our jokes, our gossip form an important part of our social identity, psychologists say.

The main finding by Dr. Gopie and Dr. MacLeod — that destination memory is relatively weak — helps explain several embarrassing, and annoying, kinds of social interaction.

Tags: memory

The Claim: Exercise More During the Day, and You Will Sleep Better at Night

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:03:44 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

THE FACTS It has long been said that regular physical activity and better sleep go hand in hand. Burn more energy during the day, the thinking goes, and you will be more tired at night.

But only recently have scientists sought to find out precisely to what extent. One extensive study published this year looked for answers

The study found that sleep onset latency — the time it takes to fall asleep once in bed — ranged from as little as roughly 10 minutes for some children to more than 40 minutes for others. But physical activity during the day and sleep onset at night were closely linked: every hour of sedentary activity during the day resulted in an additional three minutes in the time it took to fall asleep at night. And the children who fell asleep faster ultimately slept longer, getting an extra hour of sleep for every 10-minute reduction in the time it took them to drift off.

Studies on adults have reached generally similar results

Tags: sleep

Surgery for Mental Ills Offers Both Hope and Risk

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:13:10 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

One was a middle-aged man who refused to get into the shower. The other was a teenager who was afraid to get out.

Each received a diagnosis of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, or O.C.D., and for years neither felt comfortable enough to leave the house.

But leave they eventually did, traveling in desperation to a hospital in Rhode Island for an experimental brain operation in which four raisin-sized holes were burned deep in their brains.

Today, two years after surgery, Ross is 21 and in college. “It saved my life,” he said. “I really believe that.”

The same cannot be said for Leonard, 67, who had surgery in 1995. “There was no change at all,” he said. “I still don’t leave the house.”

But with that hope comes risk.

doctors still do not know much about the circuits they are tampering with, and the results are unpredictable: some people improve, others feel little or nothing, and an unlucky few actually get worse.

Tags: brain, mental health

Is Boots's new Lactium pill the solution to stress?

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:50:45 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

A pill seems an easy way to conquer tension for the over-worked male. And if not, what else might do the trick?

My wife has forgotten to buy Parmesan. I’m looking in the fridge and anger ripples through me. There I am at work all day and all I want in return is some respect and some Italian hard cheese. Soon I’m rushing tight-faced to the car having tried to squeeze fury, betrayal, contempt and exhaustion into the words “I’m going to buy PARMESAN!” What’s happened to me? Why am I so cross? Why didn’t I just make do with Manchego?

The following morning I find myself in Boots. I’m fondling a metallic package that promises to help tension.

The pills are called Equilibrium and they contain a patented new ingredient, Lactium. I’m too cowardly for a serious drug with side-effects and too sceptical to trust a herbal concoction, so this freshly invented milk-derived substance seems perfect.

Tags: stress

The Biology Behind the Milk of Human Kindness

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:45:30 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

As the festival of mandatory gratitude looms into view, allow me to offer a few suggestions on what, exactly, you should be thankful for.

Above all, be thankful for your brain’s supply of oxytocin, the small, celebrated peptide hormone that, by the looks of it, helps lubricate our every prosocial exchange, the thousands of acts of kindness, kind-of kindness and not-as-nakedly-venal-as-I-could-have-been kindness that make human society possible. Scientists have long known that the hormone plays essential physiological roles during birth and lactation, and animal studies have shown that oxytocin can influence behavior too, prompting voles to cuddle up with their mates, for example, or to clean and comfort their pups. Now a raft of new research in humans suggests that oxytocin underlies the twin emotional pillars of civilized life, our capacity to feel empathy and trust.

Tags: oxytocin

Relationships: Think positive in love

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:09:30 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

High expectations help romantic relationships to flourish

The poet Alexander Pope believed it was better not to have expectations. "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed," he wrote. Anyone who has felt the weight of expectations – be they from parents, friends, teachers or employers – may have sympathy with Pope. Yet the research on expectations in our relationships suggests we are what we expect, so it's worth expecting something.

Among the casualties of modern life blamed on unrealistic expectations is marriage. The worst-case scenario says that a third to a half of all marriages end in divorce. Why don't people realise that it's not all sex on tap, raising perfect children and sailing into retirement on a cruise liner? Yet perpetuating the line that you are what you expect, research shows that if you expect it to be great, it's more likely to be.

It's OK to have high expectations for a relationship if they're achievable

Tags: relationships, marriage, divorce

Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:13:08 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: well.blogs.nytimes.com

Researchers at Princeton University recently made a remarkable discovery about the brains of rats that exercise. Some of their neurons respond differently to stress than the neurons of slothful rats. Scientists have known for some time that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells (neurons) but not how, precisely, these neurons might be functionally different from other brain cells.

For years, both in popular imagination and in scientific circles, it has been a given that exercise enhances mood. But how exercise, a physiological activity, might directly affect mood and anxiety — psychological states — was unclear. Now, thanks in no small part to improved research techniques and a growing understanding of the biochemistry and the genetics of thought itself, scientists are beginning to tease out how exercise remodels the brain, making it more resistant to stress.

Tags: anxiety

Boiling up with Anger

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:52:26 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.usatoday.com

Are we bad for getting mad?

Psychologists say it's normal to get angry. We all do it – and we need to feel anger. It's a basic human emotion, they say.

More and more, though, we see people losing their cool in public. And the kind of outbursts seen at town hall meetings on health care reform, on tennis courts, on the Internet and even during speeches by the president are increasingly a part of everyday life.

It's also providing fodder for researchers. More than 20 presentations on anger and its effects on health and relationships are scheduled at the four-day annual meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies starting today in New York.

"Anger is a normal, natural, emotional experience that is characteristic not only of people but of animals," says Charles Spielberger, director of the Center for Research in Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology at the University of South Florida-Tampa.

Tags: anger

Listen to the voices in your head

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:23:35 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Confidence is a mind game. Confident people believe in themselves, and because they believe, they achieve.

We all have an inner voice: experts call it our self-talk

Psychologists call the unbidden criticisms that pop into our heads automatic negative thoughts (ANTs). They can take many forms, but here are a few examples:

• "I can't do it – I'm not bright enough to succeed."

• "People just don't like me."

• "I'll never change – I'm too old and set in my ways."

• "Everyone will laugh at me if I mess this up."

• "It's too difficult."

How to drown out your inner critic

Your inner critic can be a pain in the neck. Take on a new challenge and it whispers: "This will go horribly wrong." But you can drown out automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) with capability-affirming thoughts (CATs).

Examples include:

• "I'm determined to get this done."

• "Come on, you can do it!"

• "Keep smiling."

• "I'm much tougher than people think."

• "Think of the benefits when you finish!"

• "Stay confident."

Tags: confidence, negative thoughts

How to get a good divorce

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:18:56 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Amicable separation is often better for children than an unhappy marriage, says Cristina Odone

Happy ex-couple: Jude Law and Sadie Frost have remained friends despite their divorce in 2003

studies keep showing how the children of divorce were more likely to binge, have sex, drop out of school and get in trouble with the law. Grown-ups are not spared: a divorce risks your health, could bankrupt you, and dent your self-confidence. Worst of all, it can get you banned from your children's lives: one in three children, according to a study this week, loses contact with their father after divorce.

my parents arranged a civilised split that gave my father constant access to my brother and me, and my mother a comfortable income, and, it seemed, freed our parents to be their best with us.

This "friendly" split did not mean that my parents saw eye to eye. But both shared the conviction that an amicable parting was best for us children

I concluded that my parents' civilised divorce must be an anomaly.

Tags: divorce, separation